Mobile devices such as mobile telephones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) can become infected by computer viruses and worms through several mechanisms. A computer virus is a parasitic program that is designed to enter a computer or other electronic device without the user's permission or knowledge. The virus attaches to files or boot sectors and replicates itself, thus continuing to spread. A computer worm also copies itself across a network but, unlike a computer virus, is capable of spreading without a host program.
In recent years, virus and worm attacks have proliferated on the Internet. Attacks using malicious objects such as viruses and worms not only perform malicious actions, such as using up a terminal's resources, modifying the configuration of the terminal, preventing applications from running, or shutting down the system, but these programs can often infect other terminals at an extraordinary rate.
In a short period of time, these viruses and worms can quickly spread, affecting a considerable number of users and affecting the network resources because of the traffic that is generated.
When it comes to viruses and worms propagating through cellular networks, it is understood that prevention is the best approach to addressing this issue. Protecting the network infrastructure may not be enough to completely protect a network, but it is often desirable or necessary to implement at least some procedures for detecting infected terminals, as well as repairing and cleaning infected terminals.
A number of entities are continuously attempting to solve the problems associated with the infection and propagation of viruses and worms within cellular networks. However, conventional systems are currently only capable of preventing and addressing some of the problems associated with worms and viruses.